Images of the Jazz Age
posted by yegga on Sep 26, 2009 - 5 comments

The girl who doesn't age.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey on Jun 23, 2009 - 90 comments

AronRa has done some really nice YouTube vids on science (previously). In this latest vlog An Archaeological Moment in Time, he take(s) a look at how different societies are advancing at different rates on the same date in the distant past.
posted by nola on May 11, 2009 - 10 comments

How to Kick a Person in the Teeth | How to Contemplate the Back of Your Pate | How to Eat Beans Without Soiling Your Jeans | How to Get Your Beard Sheared | How to Sharpen Your Wits | How to Block a BackSlapper's Sock | How to Grope for Bathtub Soap | How to Eat Crackers in Bed | How to See TV | How to Keep a Cool Conk | How to Double Your Bubble Gum Bubble | How (Not) to Reel on a Banana Peel | How to Tweak a Beak | How to Fall on Your Face | How to Laugh at a Bum Joke
...and many more hilarious how-tos from Basil Wolverton's Culture Corner. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Apr 3, 2009 - 12 comments

Dead.AtYourAge.Com is a handy website that tells you about noteworthy people who died at exactly your age (or thereabouts). Like, in my case, Dimebag Darrell.
posted by jonmc on Mar 23, 2009 - 91 comments

How Old Are You? Guess people's ages based on submitted photos. (via)
posted by The Whelk on Feb 4, 2009 - 57 comments

Daughter of a slave casts vote for Obama. As the centenarian looks forward to turning 110 later this year, let's all take a moment to celebrate centenarians... and, of course, try to work out just how on earth they made it this far. High levels of vitamins A and E seem to play a role, or of course you could just be lucky enough to be from Okinawa or Sardinia. Whatever the reason, they sure know how to live. And as we've seen previously, they're fascinating people.
posted by showbiz_liz on Oct 27, 2008 - 35 comments

It's that time of year again. College students are buying supplies and returning to classes, as their prospective professors prepare syllabi for their budding new pupils. It also means it's time for Metafilter's semi-annual "get off my lawn" snarkfest blowout, which can only be sparked by the release of Beloit College's Mindset List for incoming Freshman. Now with webcast goodness!
posted by bjork24 on Aug 19, 2008 - 76 comments

The NYT has a new blog on aging and eldercare. Thanks to the marvels of medical science, our parents are living longer than ever before.The Gray Lady has started a blog catering to the sandwich generation, with topics, so far, ranging from when to take the car keys to personal accounts of eldercare crises. The 290 comments on this post in particular are eye opening and heartbreaking.
posted by mygothlaundry on Jul 11, 2008 - 20 comments

Virtual Age and Life Expectancy Calculator "Your Virtual Age is a reflection of your health and vitality. The lower your Virtual Age the better shape you are in. It is used to calculate the Life Expectancy of someone of your current physical age." [more inside]
posted by paduasoy on May 4, 2008 - 69 comments

Miguel Tejada lied about his age. It's not the first time a public figure has lied about his age. Gary Hart, Ann Coulter, Tom, the list goes on. But should we hold someone in contempt for lying and wanting to get ahead?
posted by parmanparman on Apr 17, 2008 - 27 comments

Young@Heart. What started as a 2006 British television documentary and became an audience favorite at the Los Angeles and Sundance film festivals in 2007 and 2008 opens across the United States this weekand will soon open in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Australia. The opening sequence showing Eileen Hall , then 92 , singing the 1982 hit from punk-rock group The Clash provided the inspiration for director Stephen Walker when he first saw the group on stage in London in 2005. Besides giving new meaning to lyrics from popular hits, the film is comedic and poignant as it explores friendship, old age and death.
posted by mrducts on Apr 13, 2008 - 24 comments

Buster Martin is an old man. This 101 year old Brit intends to run the London Marathon. He is, as you may guess, the sprightliest centenarian you've ever seen. Last year, after leaving a pub, he was jumped by some hoodlums, but managed to beat them off when he "pushed one and kung fu kicked the other." [more inside]
posted by whimsicalnymph on Mar 7, 2008 - 42 comments

Having sex at 12 is a bad idea. But if you're pubescent, it might be, in part, your bad idea. Slate rethinks the age of consent.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 27, 2007 - 89 comments

The Way of All Flesh Fascinating series of found photographs, all of the same woman, documenting 50 years of changes. Sort of like those before and after meth photos, but without the meth and without the sleaze. Sort of not like that at all, actually. Previously (that link at bit NSFW) Also, see photobooth.net (previously) and this link (very web 2.0, that fancy "press here, no HERE" link technique) to Betty Hines' show of found photobooth photos has lots of other similar sites linked.
posted by johngumbo on Sep 1, 2007 - 25 comments

...Rembrandt's last self-portrait, for instance, shows an old man having a good laugh at the ways of the world, even as he is about to leave the stage. The Western world may be ageing, then, but, far from this amounting to a 'dying of the light', a case can be made for the very opposite, certainly where Bob Dylan's renaissance as an artist is concerned. Neither should age be confounded with a heavier tread. For while a perception and characterisation of the surreal nature of much of human life was a defining quality of Bob Dylan's first golden creative period in the 1960s, it's also a delightful characteristic of his artistic renaissance in the 'noughties' of the new millennium.

Bob Dylan and the ageing of the West
In other news, May 24th is International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day

Of course, he was 23 in 1965, the year when he recorded Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, but, gosh darn it, he's still writing songs and touring and he still isn't dead yet..."
posted by y2karl on May 24, 2007 - 38 comments

Child prodigies. (Just in case you were starting to feeling content with your middle-aged achievements.) [Warning: YouTube-heavy posting] [Warning: Chopin-heavy posting]
posted by humblepigeon on Apr 24, 2007 - 36 comments

We could wait for NASA to build that permanent moon base they keep promising. Or we could just turn our apartments on earth into our own moon bases, space ships, or spy pads.
posted by Astro Zombie on Feb 19, 2007 - 12 comments

There are about 250,000 centenarians alive today, including several hundred "supercentarians" aged 110+ years. Jerry Friedman, founder of Earth's Elders Foundation, has spent the past four years on a landmark project to introduce the world to the oldest people on earth. And in a similar endeavor, photographer Mark Story has been capturing portraits and stories of people from around the globe who are Living in Three Centuries.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 4, 2006 - 16 comments

"I don't have any more babes." After offering fans $75 each to show up, Martin Scorsese's film crew prettifies the front row [Coral Cache] of NY's Beacon Theatre for the Rolling Stones' 2007 documentary. Are the boys — not to mention their audience [PDF] — getting a little long in the teeth, or can they rock for ages?
posted by cenoxo on Nov 16, 2006 - 71 comments

Seen something like this on one of your credit or debit cards recently? 09/25 DIGITAL AGE 888-529-98 CYPRUS, SE $24.99 Join the crowd. You might remember something from earlier in the summer, when CardSystems Solutions reported a security breach that had gone on for months. Or maybe you remember a bit of more recent news, when "a California judge ruled Friday that Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc. don't have to send individual warnings to thousands of consumers whose personal account information was stolen during a high-tech heist uncovered earlier this year."

My family was hit on three different cards from three different banks in less than a week. Doesn't seem to matter if you ever used the card online or not. Any guesses where "Digital Age" is getting all these valid credit and debit card numbers? Anyone? So, please, check your statements and be prepared to cancel your card immediately if you've been hit, too. Nothing good will come of these criminals being able to make additional charges against your accounts, using different shell companies to hide themselves, continuing to do this sort of thing for years
posted by RKB on Oct 13, 2005 - 29 comments

Not quite ready to settle down? I know how you feel. But then that's only temporary, right? StatsCan releases the results of a study showing that Canadians who delay marriage are less likely to marry at all. Attitude appears to be key, with Francophones being the most likely to say "Ça ne fait rien".
posted by dreamsign on Jun 7, 2005 - 19 comments

What is SENS? It stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. Confused? Aubrey de Grey believes that it is possible. His research has been in the news recently. De Grey is the co-founder of the The Methuselah Foundation, and they are offering a prize to anyone who can demonstrate healthy life extension in mice. More information at The Longevity Meme and Better Humans, among others. He recently spoke in Edmonton. Is it just me, or does he remind anyone else of a cult leader? There is something that strikes me about the way his writing sounds. The idea of anti-ageing treatment was convincingly suggested by Kim Stanley Robinson in his Mars Trilogy, which also addressed its potential social consequences, such as overpopulation and longevity as an option exclusively for the wealthy elite.
posted by dazedandconfused on Feb 16, 2005 - 12 comments

How long til you buy the farm? • "The Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator© was designed to translate what we have learned from studies of centenarians and other longevity research into a practical and empowering tool for individuals to estimate their longevity potential." Wasn't this on a Futurama episode?
posted by dhoyt on Sep 8, 2004 - 29 comments

How old do I look? This is a fascinating project -- almost like an intellectual's HotOrNot, that plays with our perception and societal ideals of age and beauty. I was close to right only about half the time, otherwise I was waaaay off.
posted by mathowie on May 8, 2004 - 64 comments

Age Maps - photographer Bobby Neele Adams fuses two photos of the same person from different points in their life, with an unsettling effect. He uses the same technique for couples, a unique portrait idea for you all you coupled Mefites. (nsfw, bare breasts) His Broken Wings series is also worth noting.
posted by madamjujujive on Feb 2, 2004 - 16 comments

Things other people accomplished when they were your age. Well nobody likes a smarty dick.
posted by johnny7 on Nov 7, 2003 - 32 comments

How old are you? The Ageless Project lists 1,800 blogs, sorted by the blogger's birthdate.
posted by PrinceValium on Oct 20, 2003 - 19 comments

You Are As Old As You Feel But... You feel old anyway, right? Well, senectitude is not just an attitude, dude. You are getting older. Deal with it. Listen, for instance, to old man Cicero. He knows. And if you're still enough of a spring chicken to wonder what your emotional age is, (not to mention tolerate Oprah), here's a little consolatory quiz to pep you up.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 12, 2003 - 24 comments

76-year old Wisconsin man carded while buying non-alcoholic beer. Wish the article had more information, like whether or not the clerk refused to sell the goods to a senior citizen, or just asked to see some ID, but still. Shouldn't a little common sense come into play here? Do you blame the "old man" for getting upset in the first place, or the clerk for not bending "the rules," or the owner for the policy, or the lawyers for the law suits that engendered the policy, or prohibition for getting this country so worked about about alcohol and appropriate drinking ages in the first place? Me? I blame society.

And yes, yes, I know "newsfilter this" and "newsfilter that." But c'mon. It's Wisconsin. Appreciate the irony.
posted by RKB on Jan 21, 2003 - 60 comments

Alternate realities - as we approach a new year, you may want to measure some things differently - your age or your weight, for example. Some calculations may be flattering, others rather alarming. Even "wasting time" apparently can have some value. No matter what your age, there are some calculators that will help ensure longevity.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 29, 2002 - 13 comments

Mothers who wait to have a baby are at risk of evolutionary extinction. "If you want to see your line persist, then it's probably optimum to start reproducing in your early to mid-20s". According to this 220 year statistical model late-reproducing women [genetic lineage] declined as a proportion of the population from 11 percent to about 5 percent
posted by stbalbach on May 27, 2002 - 8 comments

I Don't Wanna Grow Up... When did you first consider yourself to be a full-fledged adult? How many more years later was it when you realized what a child you were when you first thought that? :-) The Washington Post had this conversation-starting story this morning about stretching the boundaries of what we consider adolescence. Some social scientists now argue that our (e.g. American) society has allowed the maturing process to take longer and longer, and that many people are still adolescent in their emotional and intellectual development into their mid-30s. Needless to say, there's a lot of disagreement.
posted by briank on Jan 2, 2002 - 56 comments

Chuck Berry turns 75 today. This man is unquestionably one of the greatest original Rock 'n Rollers. But is 75 too old to rock? Tunes like Johnny B. Goode and Maybelline may be timeless, but at what point should performers of what was originally young people's music think about hangin' 'em up? For that matter, is rock too old to rock?
posted by groundhog on Oct 18, 2001 - 18 comments

Implicit Attitude Tests are a way to find out how biased you are regarding race, age, and gender. The results can be spooky.
posted by muckster on Aug 28, 2001 - 16 comments

Scientists have finally come up with a good use for old people.
posted by Nyarlathotep on Jul 24, 2000 - 5 comments